Alright now we're ready for part two of the Millie Awards. We've got a bunch of categories like breakout company or product of the year. The who is the craziest / most delusional person. We met this year as well as things like our favorite content books podcasts that we consumed. What is the best of the best and one of my favorites is unsexy business of the year. So what's a business that on the surface looks may be boring or flies under the radar but actually secretly crushes it each share our own so enjoy part 2 of the million words
I feel like I can rule the world. I know why I could be what I want to put my all in it like all days. Our next category that we have is the craziest most delusional person that you met this year. So somebody who is kind of out there. They broke your frame a little bit and it can be good delusional crazy. It could be bad to little crazy. There's this is just saying this person thinks way differently than you and and they're a bit like
They're living in their own world. All right, everyone a quick break. Did you know that HubSpot launched in AI chatbot that helps you build awesome campaigns at scale with just a few prompts. It's called campaign assistant. It's a totally free to use AI tool made for marketers and Business Leaders who spent hours a day on content creation campaign assistant will transform the way you build marketing campaigns at scale crap personalized emails ads and landing pages in a matter of minutes. Just pick the content type add key selling points and let a I take it from there and the
best part it works seamlessly with all of Hub spots marketing and sales tools. So you can scale your output across email social and more. So AI your way to the most effective campaigns at HubSpot.com / campaign Dash assistant now back to the pot.
All right, everyone a quick break. Did you know that HubSpot launched in AI chatbot that helps you build awesome campaigns at scale with just a few prompts. It's called campaign assistant. It's a totally free to use AI tool made for marketers and Business Leaders who spent hours a day on content creation and the best part it works seamlessly with all of the Hub spots marketing and sales tools. So you can scale your output across email social and more. So AI your way to the most effective campaigns at HubSpot.com / campaign dad.
Assistant now back to the pot. And
so this was a tough one for me. I was a tough category Sam. Who did you
have? So the easy one was Elon Musk you guys we already forgot about you Ilan and Zuck almost got in a fight. That was hilarious. I think elon's insane, but I didn't want to pick him because that's too easy. So I chose this guy named Val who have met via Hampton. You probably have seen him on Twitter. His name's a so like basically Val was under the radar for years and years. I mean, he's probably 45 years old. So he just started using Twitter, but he built a bunch.
Businesses, he was a Soviet Union immigrant came here to America age 19 built a business that made 10 million dollars in profit in year one. I started hanging out with them and now he's got this massive set of businesses that probably do like 150 or 20 million dollars a year in Revenue that he owns these never raise money for any of them. I invested in right when I met him I invested into one of his real-estate deals and he was new to it and I got a great return and so I did another one with him and I started talking to him and he's like, yeah, we own this many tens of millions of dollars of Brooklyn real estate and I was like Val
What the hell? How did you figure out how to do this? He goes. Well, I just did the math and I did this and I did this and he was so logical and yet so calm about it and he was comfortable with the risk. So I Gotta Give Love to Val and here's a fun fact about him. I started talking to me more he wakes up at 4 a.m. And he starts working at 3 p.m. And basically works until 4 a.m. And that's his life. And I'm like, there's so many reasons why that's bad and he was calmly just saying like, yeah, but it works for me and he's got five kids. I love people that got tons of kids. So this guy is the best. He seems like a good dad.
A good husband, but he does crazy business stuff just absolutely crazy. But he's so calm about it. So he is one of the craziest people that I've ever
met Andrew want to go next sure. So I actually struggled. I think I said Brian Johnson, he was the person that comes to mind is really really nice interesting guy, but definitely crazy all the health stuff. He's doing Elon Musk is another obvious answer but I actually couldn't think of somebody that was crazy. And so I actually inverted it I said, who is this sanest calmest most?
Boring person and Chris and I got to meet Michael Dell this year and Michael Dell is were 65 billion dollars. That's insane. We sat down with him. I'm going like okay. I'm going to crack this guy open by like you read his book. It's all very tame his public Persona is very like, you know serious and calm and nice all that kind of stuff his his book is literally called play nice, but win and so I mean Chris we go into this work office, you know.
Sorry, go ahead. So we go into this this huge gray like Office Park were in this boardroom and he sits down with us and Chris. I just walked away. We were like, oh my God, he's like the cake. I Can't Believe It's Not Butter of billionaires. Like he's just like Daddy Eddie, super nice and we're asking we're like, dude. What do you do with your money? Like, you know, have you gone like have you you know deal in 20 houses? Do you own? You know a bunch of planes you do anything crazy and he's like, nope. I just love, you know, aw.
Operating my business and growing it over time. I own to nice. I think he owns too. Nice or three nice houses. Obviously, they're very very nice houses one plane. And that was it. We couldn't get anything out of them and he told us this anecdote. This is how much of a baller he is. He goes? Yeah. So about 20 years ago. I took 200 million and I started a family office and in the family office. I wanted to make like a 10% return and so I hired these really smart guys and they started doing private credit and I don't know if you guys know what that is.
That usually its lending to people that the bank won't lend to so it's higher risk lending. And one of the people he liked to was a think a billionaire who owned a hockey team I think in Dallas or something
when you were saying that I just I was thinking of like your cousin Dom down the street who's like going to go by like a rookie LeBron card and flip it. I guess
totally he goes he goes. Yeah, and then one day I just got a call and they said well you own the Dallas Stars.
Ours now. I think it was downstairs but some professional sports team and he had just literally just owned it because he had led the guy money in the guy defaulted. Like that's how much of a baller Michael Bell
is dude. He totally SP after a see Elizabeth Holmes. Ooh, I bet you my Dell is just way more vague
dude, you know something crazy in it. This guy is lying to you Michael Dell. Is it order
to get there Andrew, you know more than me, but in order to get there, you have to be the shark easiest of all sharks.
I don't I don't agree with that. What there is no you have to be you have to be very aggressive. But I do think you can you can be a you have if you have to be a wacko right? You have to go you have to be a maniac you have to go extreme, but I think you could be nice dude. Have you ever used a Dell computer? A Dell computer is the technology equivalent of what you just described. It's like the the most Can't Believe It's Not Butter of computers that that by the way, I don't even know what that analogy means, but I said it just made sense when he
Said it's kind of an insult. I think right now. It's like he's just like he's straightforward. You know, it's like saying someone is a you know, they're the missionary position of the blending and it's like exactly this diss me. It's like no mission is great. Everybody loves you, right and it's like yeah, but you don't want to be called missionary. He's the dad
jeans of billionaires Shawn. What do you like
nicest guy ever? Yeah, right, dude. No, no. No, I swear to God right when you walked out the room. He was probably just like
I know here's how I know you can always tell whether someone's like a psycho or scary based on how their employees talk about them write their employees. Love him that God should bottom there. She's so nice. He was so respectful to everyone someone came in and brought water to him a look them in the eye and said their name and said, thank you. Like he's a nice guy a profound story. You just amazing something crazy. All right, so this was kind of tough, but then I realized I had an answer.
Sir, so I did a call the other day with a guy Ben was like you got to meet this guy. I met him at a brunch at best thing is he always says this guy's got the juice. I was like, he's got the juicy guys. This guy's overflowing with the juice. I was like, all right. I got to meet this guy. So get on a call. It seemed
like a brunch guy. What were you doing?
I wasn't at the party Ben was at the brunch. So, you know like in when people used to fight back in the day and they'd be like, I nominate my second to fight for me. That's bad. Then there's all the fighting he gets out in the real world and meet people. So anyways, he he's a he
Guys, we got on the call and the guys like he starts talking and immediately. I love them. Why because I love the Middle Eastern accent anyone who's like Persian vanian, my friend and I'm like, oh my God, I look like they can tell me any story. They could tell me that same Michael Dell story and I would have felt like it's an HBO documentary like it's so good to me. Anyways, he's got the accent .1 .2 he goes love her podcast. Look look. I have a podcaster. He holds up these headphones because me and my wife we
Get high and then we record it was like, okay. All right, and then he's like that's just how we started we had even said anything yet. He's like I'm like, so what do you work on? And he's like, I he's like American food is shit. And I'm like, I think I agree. But okay, where are you coming from with this? And he's like I Isaac I'm a super smart guy sold my last company decided. I always like I went back to Turkey where I'm from and I ate a banana and I was like, this is what food is supposed to taste like so he's like, I really
As I can use AI to grow better crops like I can literally grow better food if I particularly thing in machine learning. He's like I trained a data set on all like scientific papers. I scraped all the scientific papers from like the journals and I trained AG version of GPT only on that and I try to figure out what can I do to get more minerals in the soil so that American food which is like it's the same food. It's a banana but it tastes bad and it doesn't it doesn't taste like as rich as it does in other places and it's like deficient in all these minerals.
Rolls, and so he's like, I'm gonna grow more mineral which protrude he's like, I have the best. He's like you like dried berries. I was like kind of love dry berries to be honest with you and he's like, I'm going to send you dried berries right now. He's like, these are the best berries you ever had and music one serving of this is 60 percent of your daily vitamin C intake and I have like we by Whole Foods whatever you go. Look at that. It'll be like 5% like it's like nothing. He's like no. No, this is 60% and he's like We Grow it without soil and I'm like, I don't understand what that means. But okay, he sends me these
He's my kids are obsessed with them. They taste so goddamn good and I'm like, you know get all these minerals. So I'm like this kind of actually might not be full of shit. Then he's like I'm like, okay. What's is that like your main thing? He's like, yeah, it's that is like, but I also love to give back. He's like and I immigrated here. It really changed my life. He's like so I'm gonna bring 10,000 Turkish Engineers to America engineers and lawyers. And I was like what? He's like, yeah, my business plan is I'm going to bring ten thousand engineers and ten thousand lawyers to America from
Turkey, and for those people in Turkey, it's going to change their life and for America, you're gonna get high super-smart Talent that's going to come here and work and I was like, how why is that you're going how do you even do that? And he's like basically had figured out an entire like by the book way to get people visas systematically and programmatically and he's like any created a model where he's like, basically he he brings you over and you have any little income share. So you're going to start making 100 K plus a year as a lawyer.
Or or an engineer. He takes the income share of that. He invested in bringing the next engineer over. He's a guy based like to fund 10 of these guys. If I fun 10 I can get to 10,000 and I was like this guy is thinking on a totally different wavelength the way he worked out this this plan. I thought was great his overall energy was great and he was not just working differently than most people are thinking differently. He just works on different things than anybody. I know like, I don't know anyone that's going to grow like mineral-rich berries and bring 10,000 people immigrants into the country like that's
This guy's game plan was
by the way, I gotta share you share with you guys a funny conversation. I had I shared it with Sean and I'll read it here. But basically I didn't want to bring this guy up because I've talked about him so much and I get made fun of but I invested in this guy. This guy's company named Brad cock. He's like my have a man crush on him and he's got this robot company sent me a picture of like the robots and how they're like moving and it's amazing and I was like, wow that's amazing. You've done all the stuff in 18 months and you've not raise a lot of money. Is this like a business?
You can like not raise a lot of money for and you can own a lot of it and his response is a perfect example of why crazy people exist and how I'm just absolutely not one of them. He says well, this is verbatim. Well, it's going to cost a little under a trillion dollars to ship 10 billion robots. So I don't think it'll work without raising
and I was like, yeah, fuck me right like what do I do? I'm gonna go tweet. I'll BRB BRB. Basically this guy's building a word.
Robots, and you see you ask them the equivalent of like hey Vic thought about you doing a newsletter about it instead. You just been strapped this and not raising money. Like I need a trillion dollars. I've got like such a little bitch when he said that I was like,
yeah. Yeah, you're right. All right. What about best and worst Investments for the year?
Yeah, this is my favorite category Andrew. You've had the best stories in this I think you have the most of them are probably most prolific investor that comes on this pod. So, can you give us yours? Give us your best and worst. So yeah, my best was I was in New Zealand. I've been working on getting my New Zealand citizenship for the last two years or so. And so we had this yeah. Yeah, they have this there's this as part of the program. There's this mandatory conference that I had to go to.
And I was absolutely dreading it. I'd been traveling a whole bunch but I you know, I gotta go I had to go and I was thinking about it and going. Okay. Well, who do I know in Auckland New Zealand and I realized I'd met this guy Matt Buchanan about 10 years ago at sxsw here at ranan design agency at the time and he had started this website called letterbox. Do you guys know what letterboxed is? Yeah, that's like a movie thing. What is it? So social network for film Buffs and it started out really really small. It was just like
You know hundreds of people at first just discussing films and then over time it especially over covid grown like crazy. And so Matt my met up for coffee and I just asked him about you know, how everything was going. I wasn't at all thinking about investing or buying it and he started telling me that they had 10 million registered users that had grown like crazy and at the end of the coffee. I literally just blurt it out. Do you want to sell and he was like, well, I
I'm really even thought about that and I was like throw me the craziest number you can think of and so he threw the number out and I said, okay and I said him an offer within 48 hours and we just bought that business we can buy all that we bought it. I think 60% of it about three months ago. Did you buy it for the number? He said yeah the valuation. I think I think it worked out to about 60 million dollar valuation something like
that and it was three guys.
Yeah. No it was about I think there's about 10 10 or so.
Place all in New Zealand. So totally bootstrapped New Zealand based designer and a developer started it like incredible business. They're going to keep running it but it's an example of you know, we bought a business called dribble about eight years ago, which is a social network and social networks are just incredible businesses. I call them like airports, you know, if you own the airport, you can put a you can you've got this group of people that's going to congregate there on a consistent schedule and you can sell them.
Em, you know all sorts of stuff. You can sell them a book. You can sell them a hot dog. You can sell them a massage. And as long as you don't mess with them and you keep the community happy, you know, you can do some incredible stuff. So I'm I'm super excited about that. This is your in for for Zach. You can go back to Zach. Hey Mark, I told you I was a good idea sociable fellow social network own urge. You got one. I got two but who's counting happy to meet I fell he got my
end. Yeah, you guys can start your own little Facebook group of social.
Idea, yeah, social media owners in your best one last year was girlboss. Your worst one last year was venture capital in general what your worst one this year.
So my worst one this year. It was an investment I made about five years ago, and it's a great example of shiny object syndrome lack of focus and what I call a money bonfire, so I bought a podcast player called Castro about five years ago. And at the time I was really hopped up about
Podcasts and subscription podcasting and it was around the time I started coming on MFM actually and I bought the business because I was excited about the space not because I had a plan and so the business basically just language the founders left. I couldn't find anyone, you know, the we couldn't find the right person to run it and just every month, you know, I think I bought it for a million bucks and it just lost 10.
20km month and it was a small enough number that blended into all my other stuff. I just didn't really notice it. It wasn't like an urgent thing. And so this tiny little Ember turned into a money bonfire. And so I think I lost two million dollars or something over the last five years on this business. And now I'm in the process of selling it but
I didn't want it
to YouTube like maybe someone who wants to get into podcasting. But anyway it is it is one of those
Things where I've done this so many times when I start something and it's a runaway train and I just don't get the right people in and it just slowly Burns money.
Alright everyone a quick break. Today's episode is brought to you by the hustle Daily Show. It's a podcast that brings you a healthy dose of irreverent off be informative takes on business and Tech news. Let me give you some examples. So at the hustle used to do these Sunday emails where we would break down different businesses. And that's one of the series that the hustle Daily Show does my favorite one is they do this one on the Dolly Parton industry. So actually on our pod Shawn didn't even know who
Partin was by the way, but Dolly Parton this amazing singer and she's built this huge business with an amusement park with songwriting with casinos and the hustle daily podcast breaks that down. They have another episode where they talk about the real cost of Thanksgiving dinner and shocker. It's a lot higher than you think so check it out to hustle Daily Show, wherever you get your podcast. All right back to MFM dude, unless you're like a huberman or or you know host like us I think podcasting could be good. I think podcasting as like Venture Capital companies mostly is shit.
It's a very hard business I think to build tools for we get pitched all the time on like people are trying to make podcast more discoverable or this or that it's a hard business. That's a hard industry.
Yeah under percent sandwich. You got best and worst investment of the Year. All right.
I don't remember what I said. What did I say last year for best, you know to say so tell me that in a second, but all right my best investment man one weekend. I was talking to my wife. I was like Hey, we're gonna have kids one day. Do you want to keep working or what you want to do? And she was kind of telling me and I was like, well, I'll tell.
It to make your decision a little bit easier. I've got this idea for a little copywriting thing. I'm just going to put together because it's fun and it's how I taught my team how to write and that's how I learned how to write. I'm just doing this for fun. And if it works, maybe one day you'll want to quit your job and run this turns out she doesn't want to but I made it
anyway. Yeah, so it didn't work I run this. Yeah.
So I made this thing called copy that.com. I just did it for fun. I did over the weekend and that one little thing that I made it pays for my living expenses. I I had
Don't really do much for I don't do anything for it. And it pastes my living expenses. And for some reason like some of my other things like this podcast or Hampton like when things get a little bit bigger, you can't really deviate or move quickly and I just use this and also I have Partners so I've got like Sean's my partner in this podcast and then with Hampton, I have a business partner and I've got customers and things like that. I can't really do what I want all the time just like on a whim and so I used this as like a little bit of a playground to do whatever the hell I want.
Once and it's been fun. And so I've really enjoyed it my worst investment. So so far Sean. I've invested about a million dollars into companies via Angel Investing.
I have seen not one dollar back since I started doing it in 2016. I've got a lot of markups that that 1 million dollars is may be worth five million dollars on paper but paper don't pay my mortgage at least not this type of paper and I it's pissed me off because I knew what it was going into it and I just don't like having to have the patience or not having any involvement. And so that's probably been my worst so far. I don't think it's gonna be worse in terms of Roi, but I think it's worse.
In terms of I just don't enjoy it.
You know, what's interesting is I've got a friend. He's an angel investor and he sold his company like you and he said I've always wanted to be an angel investor and so he invested in five companies and two of them paid him back 10x within two years and so he learned the wrong lesson, right? Because that's not most people's experience. Then he doubled down on Angel Investing For Five Years didn't see a single return for 10 years. And so I think it's like anything if you try
thing the first time and it gives you a win you love it. Like I guarantee you if you have already gotten two million dollars back. I said, it's all just be like, I love Angel Investing. It's the best right, but what you've really done is you've gone into the casino and gambled maybe with like a slight Edge, but you're really gambling and I feel the exact same way. I have barely seen any money. Have you seen any money back Andrew? Yeah, I have but it took 12 years for the first
one. Well was it significant?
Yeah, so I put in 75 grand into a business.
And I got 800 Grand back and then I put 250,000 into one and I got three million back. But I also over the next period invested in like 20 or 30 million dollars into Venture. So so I canceled out all the other games and it all comes down to like when you're investing the you know, the year you're investing right if you invest in 2020 and 2021 like it's just everything's out the
window. Yeah. Well, we'll see Sean. Have you seen any
money? That's the year. I started my rolling.
One which is ironic actually the first the first batch of Investments we did so far the highest performers the first like six Investments we did were the were the best batch which is kind of interesting. Well, you've
picked up a handful of winners. I know a few that you've picked and you've got a couple really really
like you said, you know, you don't get the you don't get liquidity until if it's a winner. It's going to run for 10 years, right? So it's not a good thing to do if you need cash, you know today which is
like, yeah.
I've got winners. I mean it's going to be good. It's just boring.
Just lame. Well. Okay, my best and worst investment. All right, so my best I had a couple more interesting examples, but I'm just going to say the one that's actually the best of the truthful answer is clearly hands down Shepherd. So I had this idea mostly inspired by you Andrew, which was wow. This guy does really well and he doesn't have to start and invent the next big thing. So he
Do you buy businesses that already are working and then maybe already have a Tailwind? So they're going to just keep working at a greater rate the future like when you got into like the say the Shopify ecosystem with we Commerce I was like, oh that makes sense to me buy something that's already working that has a tailwind and hopefully you can accelerate it or make it work better. But even if you don't you still make good money if you buy at the right price and we got like a basically like it's a crazy result so far out of the
A deal so had this idea which was let me find a product that I use that I like that. I kind of believe in of a business that's already working Shepherd fit the bill by in we buy it in this case a minority stake. Not a majority stake. So that Marshall would keep operating the thing. I keep growing it. The tail winds were behind us basically first, it was covid. So people went remote that was one big tail wind s Tailwind was with the economy started to slow down over the last year. Everybody started to realize they need to be profitable.
Well one way to be profitable is hire Talent 45 times less than you're currently hiring talent in the United States and so higher offshore Talent became like a very obvious thing for business owners to do if they wanted profits and so Shepherd just takes off and the third piece which is can be accelerated and we had done a couple of experiments of like look we have this big audience right between Twitter's almost half a million people the podcast is way bigger than that newsletter. We have a bad if we have not just a big numbers but like big trust head that has been
Up. So we pick a product that we actually believe in but I think this will work. We in the last I don't know we've only on the phone our stake in the business for like six to nine months or something like that. The business has tripled and it was already big to begin with and so this is just like an incredible result what
how much of that is because of
you. Well, we could see it because when people sign up they the sign up through our link are they sign up and they say where they found it from it. So that's a minimum. Like there's some people who may have heard about on the podcast video. Click the link or don't whatever and
Nick does a great job too. So I don't want to like, you know, take away from that but like in the last six months, we drove like 50% more of the leads to the business that's like pretty insane, you know value driver and so now I'm like, oh, I have an unfair Advantage if I don't need to do ten of these if I just find a couple of businesses that are already Standalone good business that I believe in and I do the same thing. I can add millions of dollars of ARR to this business.
I basically can't lose that that is a that is a completely unfair advantage to have and now all I have to do is Choose Wisely. And so that's what I've been doing. I only did one deal this year and it we saw, you know, maybe 60 or so, but I think we picked the right one because that investment has paid off that business has added probably that one deal. He did like I thought I was getting it at a good price, but it is added at least 35 million dollars of value just to that business just based on the growth. And so that's
Like a crazy deal for him to so, you know, good good on Marshall for cutting. Yeah, it's it's interesting because like I think I assume that he did it as a secondary or something like that. He wanted T. Rest take money off the table Yeah, but effectively it's like a primary still because you injected call it 10 or 20 million dollars of free marketing as part of the partnership write the exact super-smart and it goes back to that idea. I think I've talked about it on the Pod but one plus one equals 100 you can take a mediocre business. I think shepherds are great.
So better if it's a great business, well, that's not how math Works know it's not right but it's this man, but you can take you can take you can take something. You can take a product and you combine it with an influencer and you can get an incredible outcome because you basically have a free fifty million dollars a year marketing budget as a result when people had talked about this but like, you know, when I think of influence I think of like Kim Kardashian or like, you know, mr. Beast, it's like yeah, obviously, you know, they promote a product it's going to go really well. It turns out that there's a thing like be to be an influencer, right? There's like a
And who is respected amongst business people who is essentially like, you know, not saying my ass is big but like we're kind of the Kim Kardashian of business influencers, right? Like there's you can you could promote to a community that that that understands what you're doing and if you again if you pick a good product with a good business, it will actually take off if you have a shitty product or shitty business, they'll try it and then it'll leak out right right away. And so it doesn't really look literally this is what HubSpot did HubSpot looked at the hustle and they said well the rain
They're making call it twenty million dollars. I don't know if the number is 20 million dollars of AD Revenue, but how much of those advertisers making off that 20 million dollars of ads and maybe it's 30 billion or 40 million or 50 million and so they can pay up to buy this business and then they can just direct the traffic to themselves and make all that money and
I've seen the numbers. I think it's a good I think it worked for them
and let me tell you a crazy thing about this Shepherd deal. I haven't shared before so the way we structured this deal.
Was beautifully done. So I was like look here the business is good. The business is already spinning off millions of dollars of profit. So it's like cool guys. I can bring you guys Capital but you kind of already have like a cash cow that's spinning up million dollars of profit. So like I don't really want to well that's not really the value-add clearly. The value add is going to be that I can help grow this actual grow the customer base right because because of the audience and so essentially I put a very small amount of money down and then
Company lent me the money to buy my stake in the company.
That's insane. And I was like what
and I was like hmm. Did they type this wrong? They're gonna give me the money to buy the business. Give me the money to buy the business like all right deals, where do I sign? This is easy and it was a great deal for me. But again, like I said, the valuation of the company has grown over 30 million dollars just in that period of time and so and it'll be less than a year. So like I thought dude, I'm getting an absolute steal here turn.
Oh, they got actually even a bigger still but I got it was like a win-win and so that's deal structure because that's another thing I've learned when you when it comes to buying companies like in Venture. There's no structure Venture is you put in money on a safe note or a priced round does not even negotiating on really the terms unless you're the lead investor and you're doing something really funky but it's not standard at all when it comes to buying companies structure is can make the difference between a good deal and incredible deal or a terrible deal and structure really really matters. I learned a ton.
Structure this year negotiating a bunch of these
deals. So Shepherd kicked ass for you. You did great. Let's move to the biggest L that you took this year. What was that one
last year at the end of the year this time last year. I was like Hey tax optimization. Why don't I sell a bunch of my crypto for tax purposes because with crypto you can wash trade you can basically sell and buy back the next day. You can book the loss because crypto was down last year. Let's say so you can book a loss on any crypto that you had bought.
Higher than that, it's a crypto was crashing crypto it down to like out of those six Bitcoin went down to like 16k and I had bought a bunch of Bitcoin at when we were doing the milk Road probably closer to 30 K. So I could book, you know big loss. And then I was like great I was gonna be right back. I believe in crypto, right but there is a funny psychological thing where you know catching a falling knife. It's like I could buy back in by like should I buy back in now? Is it gonna go lower? You know, should I just kind of wait this out and see how it goes maybe
Just do this other thing that that thing is hot right now cryptos cold right now. So let me just way I'm going to do it but I'll do it, you know at the end of the month and I said, I'll do it at the end of the month for 10 months straight just enough time for Bitcoin to rip back up another 35 40 percent and I bought back in and you know, it's my tax savings cost me a lot of money. So that was a big L that I took falling into a bunch of obvious psychological traps that I could have pointed out for anybody else that I fell into now. Luckily for me. I didn't say
So all of it because I bought Bunch lower than that. So it wasn't like that part wouldn't have been a tax loss. But still dumb. That's the that's the
second time. You've done that that I know
of by my course sell Low by high right? I guess basically what I executed to Perfection this year. I have one more that was like a big Miss. Wait, what is it? So we talked about Angel Investing and Angel Investing we're talking about like getting returns. Everything's a game of Angel Investing is you're going to invest in 30, maybe 50 companies and it's going to be one or two that are like the
Run away winners. That's really what you're playing. The game for is like you are not trying to have a high hit rate. You're trying to have a huge slugging percentage. So a few just absolute grand slams. And I missed 22 is a lot to the number you need to win and I missed to the first is a the realization here was it's not it's not about bad Investments you make it's the ones you miss. It's about the incredible advancements since you've missed and that's in Venture. That's what that that's how it goes.
So I got introduced to a company called what not that I don't know if you guys have heard about this business
we talked about it on the Pod you're early talking about is like eBay I
talk about it. I believed in it. I was like dude I was at twitch. It's basically live video streaming and it started with baseball cards and a sports card. So basically people would open up a pact live, but you would buy the pack so it's like lie, they're sitting there. They got all these packs on the table. You would buy one. He would open it up and he would be like you got to look at on just rookie card. Wow. This is amazing and the chats going wild you just keep buying packs. And so it was like this like a
Live video sort of like Casino. I like all those words live video and casinos. I was like, I want to invest and the guys like, I don't know man. We're like pretty / subscribe. I'm like, but it's me, sir. Pal Sean. We just met please and he was like, I let me think about it, and I didn't he was like, I don't think so. I don't think I'm supposed to let me go. Let me go talk to some people see if I can make space.
And I made a big mistake I waited and I didn't chase and whatnot is now valued. I think at 10 billion dollars. So well, that would have been by far the best investment in all of my Angel Investing. I was there early on and I believed it and I wanted to invest and I just did not fight hard enough to find a way to get into that company. And so, you know, it's an Angel Investing. It's not about oh I made this one bad investment and I lost one X. It's that I missed out on you know, a 200 x or a 500x return on that one deal.
Right like it out my 150k check that I wanted to get into that would have been like a 30 million dollar position at this point. So one question is was it when was it value to 10 billion? I think it is. It might have been at the kind of peak time
July 2022. They raised that
3.7. Yes. Okay. So maybe it's a 4 billion now instead of set of 10. So anyways, you know, basically that would have been a multibillion-dollar, you know, it's a multibillion-dollar company now, which is all you're trying to do in investing same thing.
And with a company called Shuffle so my former intern who came on the Pod. It did an episode. I was like my old in turn became a millionaire when we were hanging out doing thought I was like, so what are you doing now? And he's like, oh I'm doing this again this crypto Casino overseas and I was like, I like all those words when it comes to making money. That's I wouldn't want to take the risk myself of running that company. But if you're going to run the company, I think it's a great investment cuz these things you know, we've talked about steak.com that is just this absolute Juggernaut steak is issuing like
And dollar dividends a year. They have so much cash flow and these guys are building like a state competitor and I want to do invest and then are like lawyer and back office was like, yeah, but they're based out of this country. So they're not going to provide the K ones in time blah blah and I was in a fund and sounds like I can't put my fund money into this because again, it's like this overseas crypto Casino thing and the fun cost me this thing is going to be a total winner. Looks like their volume is growing like crazy. I think they have like, I don't know he look at the latest numbers.
I mean, it's just painful every time he tells me the latest numbers where it's like every day is their biggest day and you know, they're doing millions and millions of dollars of daily betting volume and they're profitable and I'm like, you know, you know, what's interesting is like you might feel like you've missed the boat on that but one of the things I've learned is like think about amazon.com, right? Amazon.com launched in what 1994 and you you, you know, you basically had until 2012 to
The stock right now. Obviously, it's publicly traded stock to easier to get into but I bet you could go to him and say hey remember your old pal Sean. Can I put 100 Grand in or whatever it is and just suck it up. Right don't get caught up in the fact that you could have invested at some low valuation. That sounds like it'll be a winner long-term, right? Yeah, and I mean, who knows that's a super high variance bet like they can get shut down tomorrow if like wherever they're based in some little island somewhere gets like, you know seized, you know, who knows what's going to happen with that but
That's a rollercoaster. I wanted to be on if you're gonna do Angel Investing. You need High variance bets that can become absolutely massive or go to 0 you don't want things that are low risk low reward. That's not how Angel Investing Works anyway, so those are my two worst Investments there miss missed out not lost money. What's yours Andrew? So I'm a designer like I like, you know, I like things to look nice and I think every designer has this dream of building their dream house and so about seven years ago.
I bought a piece of property and I started building an amazing house and I hired amazing Architects and interior designers and I'll just say now if you think you want to build a house try it. It really sucks. You know, everyone has this fantasy, but what it really is, you know, you think it's going to be about approving like beautiful exteriors. What it really comes down to is you are choosing where the electrical outlets go, you are proven what you know, what color tone all the lights are and so you make
10,000 decisions and eventually you get decision fatigue and you start making bad decisions or if you delegate you delegate someone else and someone else is just you know, they delegation is great in a company. But when you live in this space the things bother you and so what I found was I because I was building a forever home. I would approve they'd be like, okay. Do you want this marble or there's this really really really nice marble that you can get where it's got, you know nicer designs or whatever and I'd always choose the more expensive.
Action because I was thinking this is my dream home. I only get to build it once and so I'm massively overbuilt. I'm massively overspent. I ended up not being happy with the actual house. Once I was done
wasn't the house like 8,000 square is
huge. I had everything I could have wanted a gym. I had a movie theater all sorts of stuff and I ended up not even liking the house when I moved in because I just walk around the house going God damn it. I remember making that decision. You know, why did I make that beam that height? Why did I put that light there and anyway?
So I ended up getting divorced a year and a half ago and neither me or my ex-wife wanted the house. And so I had to sell it and I took a thirty percent loss on this house that I'd spent, you know, five years building and spend tons of money on so that was my that was my big loss and my big lesson is I remember my dad said you always want to be the second owner of a hotel right you want someone else to go crazy and build it out and then go bankrupt and then you want to come in and on that. I think the same thing is true with houses.
Go buy a nice house that someone else built. That's a great line.
You had an even bigger one though written down here.
Yeah, the other the other thing that happened to me this year. So this this is this is happened to everybody but no one feels it. So this year my net worth got cut in half on paper, right? So I went from my let's just say what's publicly available. So my tiny stock was worth like 750-800 million dollars and today it's worth about half of that and it's really
The fascinating like when you're when you want to private business or you own a real estate portfolio. You don't have a ticker right? If you want a million dollar house and all the houses in your neighborhood go down by 20% You don't see that you're not reminded of that and one of the crazy things about having a stock a stock ticker is every day. You can see your net worth go up and down in radical ways. And so yeah, that kind of was pretty a pretty insane experience to see that happening over the course of six months.
I would never text you this but I remember like seeing this
And everyone's gonna be like not I just want to be like, what does that feel like, you know what I mean like because there's been days when it's gone way up and there's been days it's gone way down and I've always curious and I'm like, he knows what's going on. I want to I'm going to stay out of his hair and this one
it's really weird. I mean Warren Buffett has this great anecdote where or metaphor where he says owning a business is like owning a farm. Let's say that your farm makes million dollars a year of profit and some some Yokel comes to your fence and he starts yelling. I'll buy your firm from
Hundred grand if you know your farm is worth millions of dollars, you just ignore the Yokel. And so there's all sorts of different people shouting different offers on your farm at all times. And so that's kind of the approach I try and take as I just go like, you know, I know my business I know what it's worth. But yeah, it's pretty weird seeing big swings like
that.
My worst thing this year was my biggest L was partially inspired by Andrew Andrew you make a huge mistake when you're talking to me the mistake is you say, oh, it's just easy. You just hire a CEO and then and you miss out on two things one It Ain't Easy there's all it's always harder than you think. There's always more challenges than you think. The other thing is managing them. You know, how should they manage you? How should you manage them the thing with my company Hampton my CEO Jordan, he's awesome, but
It's heavily based on my reputation and I'm heavily involved in the product. And so when I want to be involved in the product, I've made mistakes where I'll just go directly to certain staff versus like understanding the chain of command and so just like understanding like how to like work with the CEO effectively has been a little bit of a challenge with me I is going great and things are going good. And I've made a lot of really good decisions and he's wonderful.
But just learning how to like understand that relationship has been a challenge and I've gotten in trouble a few times partially I take blame for a lot of the the instances, but I wish we would have talked more about how to manage them. Tactically. We've talked a lot about how to hire and fire and things like that but not how to like work with someone on a daily or weekly or monthly
basis. Yeah, and I lots of learning there because I think it's very tempting to see a mistake and jump in but it's similar to delegation right when you first start delegating to an employee you
Want to correct the errors as you see them, but at the end of the day the hardest part about having a CEO is that they can ruin the business if they're not careful and you ultimately have to let them make their own mistakes and learn from them think I've shared on the Pod like we've had a couple instances where a CEO wants to spend one to three million dollars on R&D and we don't believe it's going to work out but we let them because we go if we don't they're going to resent us they're going to say Andrew and Chris were holding us back. We couldn't make our bonus.
Is because we couldn't execute on the strategy. And so we always say we want non fatal errors not fatal errors will intervene when their fatal right? So I think for you like intervening when it's something that's going to ruin your reputation. You should jump on that or ruin the business or in Peril it but otherwise the hard part is you just kind of have to watch them make mistakes and realize that over the long-term. They'll make more make more good decisions than bad.
Yeah, and it's just an emotional these are
Channel issues, but that's mine Sean. What do you want to do now? Which
one let's go to one of my favorites so unsexy business. So what is a unsexy kind of under the radar maybe simple business that stood out to you that you really
liked. Let me go first on this one. I've got one that's interesting. So there's this guy I went to high school with in Chris Chris Hoffman. He just started posting content on Twitter like three months ago. So basically he posted a story but I had known what his father did so his father owned a heating.
Cooling company called Hoffman Bros Heating and Cooling out of st. Louis where I'm from he posted he goes in 2016. We took over my father's company. I bought it from him and it was doing 13 million in revenue and he goes through 2016 all the way up to 2013 where he explains the changes they made and how much revenue the business is now doing. So in 2016. It was 13 Sheldon 20. It was 40 2023. It's going to be like 140 million in revenue from HVAC business.
- that he owns and he's any like tweets out all these interesting bits of content about things he's doing like for example, we're giving an additional holiday off and here's how I think that's going to impact the business or we created this thing called Hoffman University, which teaches people we had to buy a whole building for this much money. It's been very very fascinating Tina & cooling companies that's going to be the new storage business. We're going to see lots of people going on and doing that because of this guy Chris Hoffman really fascinating stuff.
Yeah. Some wine is really really boring so in
Brief fashion house or graphic design studio. There's a book of colors called Pantone. So you might see these these big fat books and you can literally just flip through them you look at different colors and what they've done that's incredibly smart is they've trademarked colors. So they have intellectual property where it'll be like burgundy Blue Sapphire orange, you know, whatever and this company I found out makes over a hundred million dollars a year of Revenue and one of the most genius things about is they
give you that book and they say you need to buy a new book every year because the colors fade right from being in the sun or whatever. And so they're just constantly reselling these books people are licensing these colors and the entire fashion and graphic design. It world is standardized on Pantone. So it's just so boring and wonderful more MFM in just a minute first. Let me tell you about one of the joys in my life and that is a virtual assistant. You know, here's the scenario. I'm running my company's I spend
30% my time just doing random bullshit the stuff that has to get done but it's not creativity doesn't require me and it doesn't add a bunch of value to the business. It's just stuff it. So that's stuff is what a virtual assistant does. So having a virtual assistant is a no-brainer whether it's travel booking email inbox or just knocking stuff off your personal to-do list, that would have just lingered there forever. I think it's a no-brainer if you're a business owner, you should definitely do it. I think one of the best places to find assistant is Sheppard, so go to support shepard.com super affordable. It's something that you know, you don't need to have the biggest business.
Ever be the biggest big shot in order to afford it. So it's amazing go to sports shepard.com check them out and tell them I sent you they'll take good care. If you do that so sports ever.com check it out. All right, let's get back to the
pot. Well, we talked about wgsn their competitor and how I think it's publicly traded but the trying to sell it for like I think they're trying to sell it for like 800 million dollars
because I don't think their competitors do this is like the lower level. This is literally the colors it's not saying which color w sounds like we're going to
Search reports will tell you which color is like Pantone does that to they do like I'll do like color forecasting and trending and all that kind of stuff too. Where do they make the money? Is it on the books? Is it on the dies, or is it on the reports? Do you think all of it? And then if they use the color so they'll say like this color of red is going to be a next season or whatever and if you want to use it, we have some IP around
so wgsn did 50 million in ebitda last year and they've been around for like 30 years we
I've been like obsessed with this space for a minute. I remember Sean. Remember I used to bring this up. I think at our old office. I've been loving this stuff pantone's a good one. And I think it's wgsn and Pantone like own this space. It's basically like when Starbucks is going to come out with their new uniforms or their new like Christmas sleeves or the cups. They refer to each of these companies to figure out which colors are going to be popular in six months. Yeah. It's a really fascinating company and they've been around for a long ass time to
love it. All right, let's
Next category so next category is content of the year. What are the either books or blogs or TV shows or podcasts? What was the best of the best right? We're all inundated with so much content and we all kind of want a little bit less content, but we still want the best. So what was the best content that you consumed this year? What was yours? Okay, I'll give you one. So on the TV side the bear season 2 episode 7.
You guys seen this this stretch L. But that's a great episode. I've tried to watch it. So many times I Jack's I like Breaking Bad. I love stressful shows. There's something about the way that that show is cut where I just can't watch it. I get too stressed out and I have to turn it off.
It's like uncut gems.
Yeah, I heard about this for the show. So many times I started it. I did I wasn't stressed. I was actually just kind of like cool is kind of slow. You know, like I'm not like there's not really that much going on. It's like almost so real it's like, you know a restaurant is not that exciting.
I kept hearing about this episode. So I powered through I like the whole first season the whole second season just to get this one episode.
And then by the time I got there was like there's no way this is worth it totally worth it. That is one of the best episodes of Television I've ever seen is such an emotional, you know, hi, I love that episode. I love it. I remember where I was sitting when I watch that and just thinking whoever made this you are incredible
and it teaches you a ton about business like everyone after watching that episode went and read the book. What's it called like great Hospitality? Yeah
on something unbelievable Hospitality or something.
Right. It's so there's a lot of business takeaways. What was the other one shall
give you one more shall give you a book that I like this year. It's called everyone's read this. It's called talk like Churchill stand like
Lincoln know. What is that?
So I go down these random rabbit holes, why try to get better at let's say storytelling or public speaking or things like that. This is one that's on speaking and storytelling that I really liked didn't expect to like it. I like the title though talk like Churchill stand like Lincoln and it's a very
simple book and a lot of it is kind of obvious things, but I found it to be a very useful book and it is it's about how to speak better and how to carry yourself better and different situation Samuel of it. There's a whole there's a honey better on on dress. How you how you how you should dress and why you should dress the way you dress. There's a whole chapter on that and it's very short chapters that are on simple principles with a ton of examples and it's a very old book. So like I don't think a lot of people will read this book in general and also,
Of the examples are from like, you know old presidents and stuff that happened like, you know before 1950. So I think it's just like a it's like an old book or use old examples, but it's a good one. I recommend it. It's not the best book I've ever read. But again, I just found it a very simple useful book for anybody that wants to get better at how they carry themselves and how they present themselves. That's a
good one. All right. So there's this idea with stoicism that philosophy of stoicism. I forget the exact term, but basically it's where you imagine all of the work.
If things have happened they say you've got cancer your kids sick and dying your parents are dead. Now open up your eyes and none of that's true and you're grateful. I love that idea. And so this year I went on a spree where I read books about people's hardship. So I read the wager which was a 10 out of 10. It's about a shipwreck and these guys are stranded for two years. I read like literally four different shipwreck books. I read about Lewis and Clark and how they spent 2 years going through America in order to find the other side of the country and all these hardships.
That makes my life feel better when I'm just complaining about like a blog post. So another thing that I really got into it's on Netflix. It's called WWII From the front lines and there's two things that I've been obsessed with the this year a hardship. And so seeing like these soldiers and the Jews and what they went through the Holocaust and the soldiers on D-Day. It makes me so much. So thankful that I don't have to do that and I'm like, oh that shit's easy this money shots steps away easy. The other thing that I'm obsessed with is charisma even evil charismatic people so I got like I
Read all these books about Charlie man said about Hitler about Lincoln about George Washington and I love seeing this and you see that In This World War Two documentary. What they do is they take real-life footage from that era and they colorize it and you see like, you know, Joseph Goebbels one of the one of the folks in one of the guys who let a propaganda for Nazis. You see him giving a speech and you see all you see literally a million people in the crowd like get being convinced do all these evil things and I find it so fascinating how cult leaders like use their Charisma to do to force people or
It's people do bad stuff and so WWII From the front lines. It's on Netflix. It's awesome. That's my probably the best thing that I've consumed this year.
What's yours Andrew?
So like everyone else? I've been freaking out about Ai and I go through these phases where I try not to think about it too much and then I go down a rabbit hole and I decided to read two books at the same time that kind of counterbalance one another so one book is called the coming wave. It's by one of the cofounders of opening II and it's really fascinating. Usually you've got these kind of like think piece analysis books by academics or professional authors and this guy actually is you know,
Been on the front lines for the last 15 years build Deep Mind and has been a Google working on. You know, there is AI programs for years. So and he has a very extreme view that effectively a I will disrupt all work and that the second and third-order consequences are just endless and we can't really contemplate them and he kind of argues for regulation and containment and then on the flip side at the same time to counterbalance the anxiety of reading that
I've been reading Morgan housel new Morgan households new book same as ever which is about how things don't change. What are the things that stay the same over the long term, you know, people still eat the same candy bars. They still enjoy reading a book they like going for a walk in nature Etc. So those have been two books that I've absolutely loved and then I second the book The Wager like Sam before I go to bed. I always read books about people in terrible situations or in Worlds that are very different than the world. I know.
It and the wager is amazing. I'm just at the part where they're going around the horn so I'm pretty early but oh my God, it's amazing. It's
hard to put down. Isn't it? That's one of the only books I've ever read in one sitting. Wow. Shawn. You got to go on that shipwreck train. I've got about three more shipwreck books. If you
want. I never bought into this toast this the stoicism imagine the - visualization stuff. I didn't enjoy that. I do like reading about hardship or like kind of like people who went through things just to give yourself perspective.
More than it more than to make myself feel good. I although that's a good side effect. But I think it's more important to have a broader perspective than just the little narrow stuff. You see in your day-to-day life, but doesn't that stuff just kind of like bum you out. Like I feel like I get the same effect of feeling good just by you know being thankful for what's going good and imagining things really well and I can sleep easy doing that in my advice. So the one of the most relaxing things for me is what I'm really really stressed. I watch a show called Survivorman
Have you guys ever heard of
this? Yes, the guy who like just is on his own for seven days and you have to figure it
out this poor bastard, they put him in like, you know the Antarctic with no, you know, he doesn't even have a hatchet or anything as like a harmonica we felt he does even have a film crew around. He's got an emergency Beacon if he's almost dying but he films himself surviving and you see this guy like drinking his own urine and eating rats and digging, you know digging shelters under the ice at all this stuff and every time
My watch that I just think how remarkable it is that I live in this amazing warm structures got like go to bed wearing masks up on his forehead his like a clecos time watching Survivor gets printed emails asking in the glow of my peter Atia red phone like ah shit. I saw blue light two hours before bed now
and you're in the wager, like don't these pussies?
I know that they'll just get they just have to eat a lemon and they won't get scurvy. What a bunch of
morons.
All right, while this predictions what's yours dude? I didn't I didn't do
any Here Andrew. You gotta carry us. Yeah. So mine is that I think assistant admin jobs could go away or change. Radically. I think that if you think about a lot of the tasks that personal assistants do I think a very well-trained Google AI that understands your
I'll drive your calendar and your email will be able to do probably 80% of those tasks maybe more and I think that's coming in the very near term. You know, these things are just progressing at such an X but exponential rate. And so that's something I've been thinking a lot about none. I'm excited. You know, I think it frees up a lot of people to do, you know more interesting work, but it's going to be pretty wildly disruptive what we got to read our predictions from last year right that I think that's where we got to start for this one. So Andrew your prediction for
23 was that we would see a lot of copies / competitors to GPT 3 / AI correct? You said Google jumps in correct? AWS has something and as your have something as your did the big Microsoft did the big deal with opening I so you were pretty spot-on say I'm yours was Ilan dies or gets cancelled in a serious way and then he said open a gets regulated.
The inputs happened the inputs for Elon Musk were there the output was
He's
not dude. He's getting kind of like a long slow cancellation in a progressively through
and by the way, that's my same prediction for the next year. I think Elon will admit that buying Twitter was a mistake. Although I think he's already acknowledged these like this is a hardship that I didn't necessarily need but I think that like with all the advertisers leaving I've been buying ads on Twitter. I tested it it like the cost per click. I like stupid cheap. I don't want to mention that on here because it's yeah, I'm gonna cut that shit
out. But
basically I think I think that the Twitter experiment. I think it's got a
But not under Elon or something in a drastic way. So I'm extending my 23 and 224.
Okay, I like that. My prediction was selfish. I said this is the year that I turned the corner and actually get shredded up. Guess I'll get ripped in great shape. And then I also said I would start a company that's you know special or like maybe a legacy company definitely did not do the second one didn't but I also didn't like after that podcast. I stop thinking about that completely and I made actually my goal to not start a company this year, but I and then the getting ripped I actually got to my fattest this year.
but then
before the end of the year fourth quarter was it in the clock was draining and I came through in the clutch and I'm now down about let's see 13 14 pounds and I've been eating clean for what forty five straight days, like perfect perfect eating exactly what I want to be doing and for to put that in perspective 45 days probably doesn't sound like much it's a month and a half probably the longest I went of actual perfect eating where I'm not eating a bunch of chips or
You know ordering a pizza or something like that, you know one night when I'm tired or stressed by probably the last time I did a stretch would have been like seven days would have been like the longest I had gone just of actual clean eating and now I'm at 45 is this going great with those impacts are without. He's this haters them pick baby. I'm on that knows em pick plan Daddy.
Yeah and in the YouTube comments you every video is commenting either your skin or your look is so it's working people are people are loving your glow up. What about
Out coolest moment of your year.
I have a fun one. So last year my clothes. Mom was all about me this year. It's all about somebody else. So I have a buddy. Well, I went to college with my buddy Dan and Dan we started our first business together straight out of college. So we were like The Three Amigos, but then we that company wasn't really working out and two of the three of us went to Australia and had this I really cool opportunity. But like there wasn't really a spot for Dan on that boat.
Eating like you know, I got a spot and I was able to get one other guys pop, but it was really too much for me to like convince this Australian billionaire why I need two of my friends to come with me to go do this thing. That was like kind of this unspecified project and I feel bad about that and I felt bad about that for like a decade but I was like damn I really wish like even if you didn't come that we had gotten them into a good landing spot before we made that decision. I feel like we kind of left. No man left behind. We kind of left a man behind and I felt bad about that. I carry that guilt. He did totally fine by the way. He went and got a job at Facebook and
He when he was at Facebook, he went from like the bottom to the top the bottom was his job at Facebook initially was to like make sure that like no penis will show up under Newsfeed looks like building like penis detection like systems to like make sure that you know, and by the way you ever logged in the face Wing sleepiness never heed and did a great job. And so while he was there he went and enrolled in the Facebook developer boot camp. I taught himself to code and then he became then he went out in the marketplace did
Genius thing it his job application. He's like, well, I could say that. I've been an engineer for two years. That's not really gonna get me that good of a job. So he's like instead he went out. He reframed it. He goes. I'm a Facebook trained engineer. I know how to do engineering at Facebook. I can make your engineering team run like a Facebook engineering team people loved it. He got a job as CTO of a startup that went on to raise the OB round surround around but unfortunately the start of fizzled out and I catch up with Dan and I say he's like, hey, man.
You know, unfortunately my options I thought were going to you know, make me a bunch of money didn't really work out. You got any other like kind of I'm looking for a job. Let me know and I said, yeah, I met this guy Andrew Wilkinson and then I met this guy Sayid bulky and I've been listening to this podcast that I create and it's all about there's a bunch of these people that are buying businesses I said and if you ever consider buying a business, he's like, I don't even know where I would start and I was like, I'm gonna help you and as I I'll I don't know a ton about it, but I know more about it than you do so let you know like let me be a blue belt and help a white belt here. And so
Basically help Dan do this search process. I had no stake in it. No investment in it, except for this is one of my best friends from college and Dan bought a business. He bought a after six to nine months and several like close calls, but you know last minute we said no. No, this is not a great business. Don't buy it. He buys this business and he buys this bag manufacturer bag like bag sales company. I don't know how you describe it. They don't make the bags they get the maid, but they sell them two big retailers. So
Like if you go walk into like a Ulta all the bags at Ulta That's My Boy dance company and this guy had been running it for years. He had no contracts with any of these companies who kind of ran it off pen and paper and so he my friend I was able to negotiate and buy this business at a great price and he just texted me yesterday saying that he's only owned this business now for like three or four months that in the just in the last sort of five months that will be this year. He will out of the profit of this business after paying all the debt that
Used to buy the business. He will make more than he made at his highest paying job as CTL already in the first five months and he's like dude the lifestyle is great. He's like I'm kind of working more but it's totally different the totally different feel right like I own my own business I come in every day. I'm excited. He's like, I see this path. We're going to grow he's like, I'm the bag. I'm Dan The Bag Man and he's like I can I could do this and this can be like my, you know, like my asset that I build because like he's like, you know, even though I'm making more like I did with my job. It's even better because you can't ever sell your
Job, but with this I know if I build this business up and is making more profits one day I could sell this business and cash out like a life-changing some for me and I feel so good. I got to you know, sit shotgun for him while he went on this ride
kudos to Dan. What's the name of the company? Can you say
I don't know but if you email me I lie attributed and if you need bags for your business Dan's got you
mine's a bit. Mine doesn't have any great story. So Andrew, I saw what you put that is also mine, but I'm not going to say that one. I'll go to the next one, which is actually the most important one. I had a kid this
Here. That was my that was the coolest moment this year. I think Andrew you you told me what did you say? You said you're going to feel so much indoor dopamine every morning when you look at your kid and I get it now. So now it's my turn to gate keep people and tell people like, oh you'll understand when you have kids you'll understand it. I understand a little bit and it's been awesome. So that's mine. But Andrew you do
yours. I think I said it's like liquid MDMA gets shot into your brain every time you look at your bait.
Yeah.
It's awesome and it's and it's brought me closer to my wife to I have more. You know, I've already I always respected her but now there's more like of a spiritual respect. It's kind of funny, but what's yours
totally? So yeah, we had our first ever live MFM in Vancouver. What was that February? I guess this year and I kind of put it on like so I like, you know texted you guys and I was like, hey want to do this event. Let's do it in Vancouver. We rented this huge theater, and I remember getting the phone.
Of the theater and sending it to you and we were just like holy shit. Like, how are we going to fill this thing? Or I was really nervous about it. And we I remember we were backstage and we were like peeking out and the entire theater was packed. There is a line of the crazy. Like it was really really crazy. And this was like some massive multi-level theater and see like 1,200 people 1,200 1,300 people or something and I remember Sam was like, we're backstage and he goes I don't use Facebook, but I do
Today because I want everyone in high school to see that I filled a theater and he's supposed to photo of I just love that was such a great moment there. I remember Sam you posted this photo of Alexis Ohanian with Serena Williams, and he just looks like a like a like a pasty white nerd with this like milk, like beautiful Amazon and you go the Nerds win. And in that moment. I was like, okay the Nerds want you didn't like what I said that by the way, he was that
Not a fan. But yeah,
it was awesome that we sold out that theater that that was a really exciting thing. And you did the dumbest thing ever you made people pay but then you gave the money back if they showed up
people would have just paid. Yeah, I know in retrospect we should have charged.
All right last three categories you want to go to let's go to break out of the Year. Sean. What do you what do you have
mines real simple break out of the year. I think has to be exempt o'clock. I feel like I was a kind of changed the world.
It's not just like a tech thing or a business thing like those epic is everywhere. And there's I don't know the jury's still out on it. But there's a lot of evidence that even if has epic has, you know, maybe side effects or you got to stay on it to maintain the gains or whatever like that people not being obese and people not being short of controlled by their Cravings whether it's for food or if they're even seeing maybe effects for alcoholism. That seems just
Really really big deal and I kind of its kind of the cliché ideas. Like what if what if there was the magic weight-loss pill and now the kind of is that's mind-blowing to me that there we did it. There is a magic weight-loss pill
while I was picking between Bret Taylor and I was epic and so Sean. Do you remember how you first heard about those epic? I think it was June of 2022. I texted you and I was like, there's a drug called semi glue tied. Its I'm in New York and it's like kind of popular amongst like only a small group of like weird.
Hackers, I'm going to try it and I tried it and I remember messaging you or maybe I even said in the Pod. I'm like for some you know, I've got I had drinking issues a long time ago, but I was like for some reason I even feel like I think this might like to hear that too like you
called it a hundred percent. Not only do you show you you show me a picture and I'm like, wow, that's incredible you go you go. I started this semi glute I'd think I was like dude you like never heard of this like, yeah. It's inject this thing and me and I'm like, bro, you just inject random shit into you.
That's not smart. But you were totally on it. And then you said the I think this career going to cure alcoholism and I remember literally like I didn't want to laugh in your face. I remember laughing inside being like dude, that's just like sounds like a crazy leap, you know, you can't just say that shit. Then there's no evidence of that. I just felt it. I can feel
it when I so, I don't use it anymore, but I tested it for a small amount of time and this is some really tired. That's the name of the drug or the I don't know how you even explain it the root drug. And then there's those epic is the brand name, but
I remember like putting that in my body and I'm like, I think this is going to cure alcoholism because you don't crave anything and I think what's going to happen is in 10 years were going to see downsides to this drug because right now there's like very few or at least it's impacting only small amount of people. So I think that the they're still going to be downsides but I think that what it Scott Galloway said he goes it's not chat GPT. It's glp-1. That's the big thing glp-1. This drug class is going to be way bigger than chat gbt and I
With them, I think that's a break out the year. What's yours Andrew?
Yeah, that's like antidepressants or something. So mine. Mine is pretty boring. It's a company called snipped and it's a podcast player and I don't know if you guys have this problem, but often I'll be driving. That's why I listen to podcast most and I'll hear something incredible like a great quote or just a great line or something. I want to follow up on later and until recently I've either just forgotten it. Basically it goes out the other side of my head.
Head or occasionally, I would pull over my car and I'd make a note or something like that and snipped basically solves that so what snip does is it has an AI that basically takes the transcript it does like voice recognition on the transcript of the podcast. It pulls out all the key moments. So a let's say that you want to listen to a Joe Rogan interview, but it's three hours and you only really want to talk hear them talk about stuff that isn't MMA you can jump in or whatever. But then also when you hear something interesting you can tap a little
Button in carplay or on your phone and it will actually grab the text for whatever was just said and I found that incredibly useful and all my nerdy friends that are into like journaling and read wise all that stuff are going crazy for it. So I love that product.
You're on the homepage a testimonial from you.
That's oh really? Yeah, they apparently you
must have an invested or anything.
You've tweeted it out and they use their tweet and I think MFM is yeah. I'm FM is on here too. That's pretty
cool. Sam. You had you had a snipped moment last pot where somebody was like, yeah varda is this crazy company they and we were like, what do they even do it go to? Yeah. They're manufacturing drugs in space. So goes there's a pause he goes why?
What's wrong to benefactor drugs in space? Like what's wrong with Massachusetts? I still haven't gotten a good answer. I'm sure it exists Robbins Massachusetts is just that is incredible incredible content.
This is the end of the Millie Awards. Congratulations folks. This is a the end of 2023. It's already 2024, which is crazy. I saw someone say Professor was like, hey you you can use sources in your paper from the previous century.
And this person the student wrote in and she goes a hey I was going to do something from the late 20th century is 1996. Is that too old to use? So if you're born in 2000 already 24, I can't believe we're going to that
year dude. That's us now too old to use.
Yeah, if it's crazy. That's it. That's the Pod congrats
follows. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it.
as travel never looking back
Hey guys, listen up. If you're listening to my first million on Google podcast. We want to let you know that that will no longer be an option soon. The reason being is Google is sun setting its podcast app sometime in early 2000 24 in favor for you to music and we want to let you know give you a heads up before it's too late. So my first million is available anywhere you get your podcast like apple podcast Spotify, you know the drill if you're using YouTube music we're going to be there as well or if you're an Android fan. There are plenty of apps like overcast Pocket Casts player FM and a ton more.
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